such a curious phenomenon ..apart from the fact they were all trying to outdo each other with overstated composure ..speaking with the kind of gravitas peculiar to ocaissions of great moment ..even if it was before history had the time to bestow it   ..no ..it was not even their competitive altruism ..outshining each other to be first off the block to up the ante with this or that aid or stimulus package or condemn this or that rogue nation ..it was all about the photo opportunity ..certainly there were numerous enough of them ..as they went strolling about the lawns or chatting at a state dinner  ..having one on ones with each other ..displaying the obvious warmth they shared   ..until the cameras were spotted ..even if discreetly situated to catch that candid moment of mutual rapport ..out came the index fingers ..to give the impression that one is holding forth ..the other is listening dutifully ..they seem to be no different from any of us ..and there you have it ..a simple explanation for all those photographs that captured all those statesmen in the frame with their business fingers in plain view

” extreme close up ..whatcha got there honey! ..hhmmm ..did you write this? ..[aggressively] ..did you write this? ..huh ..huh! ..swishpan ..oh there’s a problem all right ..who do I think I am? ..huh ..well I do this for a living  ..fool  ..yeah  ..yeah  ..I did a ten week course sister ..cost me nine hundred bucks  ..yeah ..yeah ..do you know how much they pay me to do this shit?  ..huh ..seventy bucks a script ..shazam! ..and another one bites the dust! ..yeah baby ..from page to screen I can knock off three a day ..I am the gatekeeper kapiche ..matchcut ..from laptop to cowboyshot ..[quickdraws a yo-yo]   ..longshot”

[walking the dog as he moonwalks back to the stove] ..he carries the pan over to the table and loads the tofu next to the salad on his plate ..he spends quite some time arranging the food to his satisfaction ..then after taking his ADHD medication ..he commences to eat

[calmy] “..white space ..see ..white space ..you got too much goin’ on here ..look at this ..[holding up a napkin] ..there’s way too much text here ..look honey ..I got a short attention span ..all these words are makin me claustrophobic see  ..you’re defying the architechtonics of our template ..you’re pressin’ buttons I didn’t even know I had ..them studio execs ..they all got the same buttons as me ..get it ..thats how come I got this gig ..understand me ..and you understand them ..whats my gig? ..[evil laughter] ..whats my gig? ..martini shot!  ..contrazoom! ..[thousand yard stare] ..I’m a story analyst ..”

flying ..it only seems real when I’m sitting in the cockpit ..we’re in first class so I don’t really care ..getting it all down for posterity on my handycam ..oblivious to the cascade of conversations swirling around me
..our group has won a 10 day snowboarding holiday ..courtesy of some wacked out cable TV show ..I’m gettin’ used to the tripped out hand that life deals to people like me ever since I took over the Freak Outreach Center after ‘Louie the flame’ had his burnout ..I’m not a health professional or anything like that ..only have a diploma of applied paragnosis ..I do it for the laughs really -besides some patients are just too funny to cure ..our motto is ‘deviance is the new normal’ ..and to tell the truth I feel quite at home with these folks now ..we only use nicknames -given like a badge of honour if you somehow manage to fit in
..Golden ears is our resident ecouteurist -never been the same since that time he disguised himself as a tree to spy on some feral wiccans in the wild …some of them turned out to be dendrophiles ..on his left is Houdini ..yeah the one looking over his shoulder ..with a smile on his face ..can’t hold down a steady job or relationship ..just can’t commit ..-phygephilia ..that couple over there ..Heckle and Jeckle ..touchy and insensitive ..she’s often really crass and arrogant and sometimes he’s just a nasty bitch ..gender dysphoria ..over there is Cyrano ..he’s into erotographomania as well as erotomania ..the first thing he ever said to me was ‘don’t look at me ..I’m hideous’ ..the hottie by the window is Messalina ..one of a kind ..she’s into zelophilia as well as dacrophilia ..not to mention timophilia … on my left is Coochie Coo ..she has a thing for knismolagnia ..what can I say ..she’s lotsa fun and makes me laugh ..across the aisle over there is Manga ..yeah you guessed it ..oculophilia ..and beside him is the very mystical Madame Blavatsky ..she likes dreamin’ and …well …psycholagny actually ..on her left is Hollywood ..yeah -with the tinfoil beret ..the life of the party ..got a little thing goin’ on with castophrenia ..but we won’t hold that against him ..well thats it for now ..can’t really say too much on the fly like this ..besides one can’t afford to be too equivocal ’round these sorta folks ..

Glossary

castophrenia: belief that ones thoughts are being stolen

dacrophilia: arousal from crying

dendrophilia: arousal from trees or tree worship

ecouteurism: arousal from eavesdropping sexual activities

erotographomania: arousal from writing love letters or poems

erotomania: arousal from an uninterested person or stranger

gender dysphoria: behaviour matching the opposite sex

knismolagnia: sexual arousal or gratification from tickling or being tickled

oculophilia: arousal from eyes

paragnosis: skill in matters immune to scientific investigation

phygephilia: arousal from being a fugitive

psycholagny: ability to achieve orgasm without physical stimulus

timophilia: arousal from money or wealth

zelophilia: arousal from jealousy

©Gregory Andrews 2009

[suspect] ‘well shit detective ..how much thought have you given them?’

[detective] ‘looks like we got a wise guy here ..I’d advise you not to get to cute ..understand?’

[suspect] ..just get me my attorney and we’ll do lunch ..big guy’

[40 minutes later he is joined by his attorney and the interview proceeds]

[suspect] ‘mind if I take notes?’ [ writing something on the first page of his notepad]

[detective] ‘I’d like to ask you some questions regarding your activities last night’

[suspect] ‘I may respond to some of your questions’ [..in a concilliatory tone]

[detective] ‘look this is a slam dunk ..we’ve got you at the scene of the crime ..we got the murder weapon ..why’d ya do it?’

[suspect] ‘you’ve asked me a direct question ..naturally you’re expecting a response but if I remained silent it wouldn’t be very pretty ..this is the politicization of silence ..if I don’t respond instantly it is taken to be an admission of guilt as a lack of denial ..in fact it would be even worse if I actually denied it later ..a non-adjacent denial ..not the preferred response ..its a basic little rule of conversation analysis ..all conversations have been found to be made up of little rules ..it involves the concept of turns otherwise known as adjacency pair structures  ..your initiation of it is called the first pair part ..my response or turn ..would be known as the second pair part   ..your strategy seeks to turn an act of voluntary co-operation into involuntary compliance ..good luck with that’

[detective] ‘you’re a pretty sharp dude ..evading my questions ..seems suspicious ..got something to hide?’

[suspect] [writing something on the second page of his notepad] ‘well ..you are paid to be vexatious with you’re reasoning..arent you?..just like a lawyer [winking at his lawyer] ..in my case ..its all for free’ [smiling]

[detective] ‘we know you’ve been harassing his informants ‘

[suspect] ‘look ..if I asked you a question ..you’d only play ball insofar as your second pair part was only some kind of clarifying response ..otherwise ..you’d fail to offer an adjacent response ..now.. you’re  misinterpreting  something I did or said or didn’t say ..in fact you’ve been trained to ..the preferred response here is for me to ‘let it go’ ..yet if I wish to clarify it at any later stage not only does it look worse ..sorta like I’m changing my story..it also falls outside the framework of your rule-set ..meaning you’re likely to respond with a disjunctive shift’

[detective] ‘you think this is some kind of a game ..a fucking joke ..smartass?’

[suspect] [holding up the first note taken earlier ..it reads 'you think this is some kind of a joke?']

[detective] ‘you just don’t give a fuck do ya [leaning in close ..menacingly] ..listen professor ..I ain’t got time for this ..I got a dead undercover cop ..a family of seven that needs some answers ..and a bunch of cops out there ready to play hardball ..understand?’

[suspect] [holds up the second page ..it reads 'this is where you probably make some sort of sarcastic ad hominem ..possibly even insinuating a lack of basic humanity ..possibly even a thinly veiled threat' ..he screws up both pages into a tight little bundle and tosses them into the waste basket] ‘..you might want to get the fingerprints off that ..are we done here?’ [looking at his attorney]

[attorney] [on their way out] ‘you don’t like cops much ..do you?’ [a half smile]

[suspect] ‘I don’t have a problem with cops ..just some of their rule-sets’

No More

wherewithal they should so wit the page
we dread their measures on our stage
sweetly read of cruellest honeys
sagely bread ..so spread and fed
owed on owned treasured moneys
sought and lost at fountainhead
found at cost by honours bed
so squandered all the flower said
unblossomed by errors of simple praxis
picked a part where the masked moon waxes

~Minor Elizabethan Drama (1) Pre-Shakespearean Tragedies ..consisting of four plays ..Gorboduc: Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville; Arden of Feversham: [?]; David and Bethsabe: George Peele; The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kidd

I started out with Gorboduc but quickly lost interest with it not so much for its tedious style but for its striking similarities to King Lear, and so abandoned it for ‘Arden of Feversham’ interesting for a variety of reasons ..it has a good flowing style ..it is perhaps one of the first English plays about private men and their affairs ..rather than courtly life or continental themes ..as it concerns an actual murder of the period ..Thomas Arden’s wife Alice loves him not ..she bestows her love on a fellow named Mosbie ..together they plot Arden’s muder through the agency of two well known ‘cutters’ by the names of ‘Black Will’ and ‘Shakebag’ ..of all things ..there is the obligatory subplot of suitors for the hand of Mosbie’s fair sister-Susan ..proving to be a sufficient appeal for drawing accomplices into the machinations of their scheme ..’Black Will’ and ‘Shakebag’ prove to be somewhat bunglers of their craft ..naturally luck refuses to be easily complicit in their commission

I rather enjoyed this play ..finding perhaps the two most intriguing things about it to be how the faltering pact of the lovers resembles that of Macbeth and his Lady as also in the curiosity of there being no clear cut hero to speak of ..That this play has been attributed to Shakespeare comes as no surprise ..as I recall reading somewhere that around the vicinity of Arden ..lengthy festivals which were said to be of ‘Faerie’ in nature took place ..and it has been speculated that a very young Shakespeare may well have attended the activities ..perhaps even providing early inspiration for ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’

..life is somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle and its pieces..or several.. ~our impressions of ourselves ..our regard for others ..our worldviews ..our sense of right or wrong ..all assembled from fact and fiction ..honesty and lies ..hope and fear ..objectivity and subjectivity ..charity and malevolence ..freedom and control

if you’ve ever tried to live outside the jigsaw ..if you find yourself there or have been there for even a moment ..you will no doubt know how hard it is to remain there ..where it often seems that every dynamic and interplay conspires to force one back into the image of the puzzle ..where the pieces are lonely for completion ..where the process and the picture serve to imperil every promise ..it is such an effort to not become a piece of someone elses puzzle ..

fuck that ..seriously ..fuck that ..don’t stand for it ..and if in this you cannot succeed ..keep at least a part of yourself ..outside a puzzle

Aaron should have such an Othello trespass within ..or Cain be so Able
a halfmoon struck so poorly coined upon some fable
where many a puzzle pegged as pieces
fitted as keys to turn some wheel of fortune
full circling those dizzy spirits spun to be spoken so

..I have always had a lot of time for people who devote themselves to this sort of thing ..-even though I have never considered myself to be one such as they. Shaman are for the most part dedicated to community ..culture and tribe ..in this they serve ..culture is a thing I as an artist see fit to be transformed  ..in this I mean mine ..and no-one elses.. I would not be so presumptuous ..I for my part have seen fit to pursue community through synonomies of attribute ..activity and disposition ..-other artists ..writers and suchlike ..there are yet still more profound differences of outlook to consider ..while I have a great and abiding interest in all things metaphysical ..we differ significantly in our perceptions of the spirit world ..it is my contention that when death occurs that life is an entity no more ..never suchlike again ..when I experience what others refer to as the spirit world ..I am referring to psi like resonances such as I believe to be within the facility of any human to know ..an aspect of collective consciousness or race-memory if you like ..such as the trance like state numerous tribal groups undergo to commune with their ancestors ..so I believe that when a person encounters these spirits it usually indicates that a person or persons very alive and real are thinking in certain ways ..the spirits encountered are quite substantial in a manner of abstracts ..significant psychological phenomena ..all things being considered I believe real shaman to be of a higher academic pedigree than psychologists ..

‘what should I do to learn things in the way you did?’ ..the old man took so long to answer the younger that the clouds had been usurped by the breeze ..’you must find yourself in that zone where there is no enduring honesty to be found ..only the logic of suspicion ..the jurisprudence of superstition ..the logos of failure ..you must come to know a collective essence of self deception so as to be able to definitively answer the question ..What is it that stands in for a surrogacy of being lost to a devolved nothingness that is determined to grasp it’s own apperception?’

..on his way back down the mountain the young fellow wished he’d taken his notepad

her 3 o’clock was waiting ..quickly changing from her pant suit into a silk top ..sheer stockings and micro skirt then positioning her chair just so near the couch she opens the door and ushers him inside   ..her favourite client ..he shuffles in ..unkempt and slightly disturbed ..he tells her he had the weirdest dream -something like a movie and would like her thoughts on it ..younger than her she liked everything about him except his argot ..she gestures toward the couch with a reassuring smile

‘it all starts out like I’m this journo dude ..for years and years the city’s been terrorised by ..like this serial killer ..we call him the The Happy Cat Killer ‘cos he always draws like a Felix the cat face at every crime scene ..naturally there’s like loads of copycat killers ..known locally as Leotards ..but this dude is real clever right ..sure the public know that every seventh victim is positioned theatrically alongside the composite assembly of trophies taken from the previous victims ..but what they don’t know is that the dude always stuffs some sheet music he wrote in every victims mouth ..thats how the cops know he’s the Happy Cat Killer ..see ..so I know this cop she’s not real cute and don’t get out much ..I play her right ..just to get the guff on the investigation ..thats how I know ..anyways you know how I went to the conservatorium n’shit right ..so I gets her to copy the manuscripts so I can study ‘em right ..thats when I discover that whoever wrote it took particular care over the Viola da gamba parts ..just beautiful ..I mean only a virtuoso could play stuff like that ..so I take a punt that Happy Cat is a Viola player …meanwhile he’s killin’ peeps and firin’ off sarcastic letters to the mainstream press all about how freakin’ dumb the cops are ..tauntin’ em n’stuff noamsayin ..I’m researchin every viola player in town ..till I come upon this one virtuoso that only ever recorded stuff ..was a complete enigma ..no-one even knew what he looked like ..so he like just disapeared from the scene years ago ..I track him down ..no sign of the dude ..then I get a phone call ..its him ..he asks me to meet him in an underground carpark knowing that I ain’t gonna tell the cops ‘cos it’s my big break right ..so I’m there waiting ..in the frikkin dark ..an I can tell you I’m so scared I’m already tryin’ to wake up ..suddenly the place is flooded with light I can barely see ..then there’s this shadow ..his shadow ..like he’s some kind of freakin’ giant in a cloak and cowl..his voice is dark ..he calls me by name and talks all about stuff I thought nobody knew about me ..I’m so offended ..insulted that I rush toward the light and stumble over this freakin dwarf in a cape standin on a chair ..he pulls a gun on me and I know I’m for it ‘cept these like Israeli security dudes ..who I’ve already told you about ..waste the guy right there ..and then the next thing I know I’m stumblin around the university in some kind of stupor ..can’t remember anything but my name and I’m asking these dudes where Meridian House is ‘cos all I’ve got on me is this key with a tag and a room number to the place and they’re laughin’ at me sayin shit like ‘hahah ..dude ..you’re out there man ..you’ve been cut up’ ..so they take me to this cafe called the ‘Babe cafe’ ..where this squirly old chick serves us coffee at like 3.30 in the mornin ..and all through this dream there’s this like song goin’ on ..acoustic guitar with this really sorta cynical feral voice ..really deep ..singin’ stuff like

‘fell through the sky ..winged from a lie
walked down wet streets ..no shoes on my feets
drunk as a skunk ..’least thats what I thunk
for every good thing I done a bad thing
where is my son ..whats he done with my gun’

just when I’m thinkin ..where’s the freakin’ chorus ..the tenor kicks in ..some Irish dude who suddenly goes all alto on their asses ..and I’m like ‘nooooo!’ ..so these dudes finally take me to my room ..and its really weird ..the floor is like so spongy I’m up to my ankles in carpet ..and there’s no TV ..so I go out to the common area ..and theres my TV with my room number on it ..and some grungy dude watchin the other one ..and I’m all like ‘is that my TV?’ ..and he’s like ‘sure ..it’s been here for ages’ ..so to start up a converstion I say ‘I’m here for the infrastructure ..how about you?’ ..and he goes ‘I’m studyin’ sportscastin’ ..real mumbly like he’s embarrased about it ..so I take the TV back to my room and take a powernap ..and then I woke up’

His psychiatrist seems puzzled ..looking at her watch she says ..’look ..we’ve run way past time ..but we can continue this later if you’d like ..wanna catch a movie?’

©Gregory David Andrews 2009

where is the poet

where are his scripts

that man of ideas

of timeless quips

why won’t he join us

when we live for the word

to die for a story

we’ve never heard

A young man on his way home after a heavy night of serious drinking falls asleep behind some topiary near the footpath ..he is awoken to hear a racist and crazed tirade being uttered by a very nasty and disturbed woman who then lays a malicious curse upon his people ..unaware that she has been overheard by an extremely vicious revenant warlock in his 78th incarnation

[I'm thinking Toby MacGuire would be cool as the warlock]

A Princely thing

A struggling actor finally achieves staggering success in his first major role and is catapulted to stardom ..having concealed a violent and murderous past as a cage fighter  ..after watching the girl of his dreams being slowly destroyed by paparrazi he tips off his victims with exclusive scoops regarding his ‘whereabouts’ …and one by one collects increasingly gruesome trophies

[this would be really cool if it had Mickey Rourke or Woody Harrelson playing the lead]

At the appointed time: Recto

Constantly trying to improve her own opinion of herself ..a humble woman learns to interact with a remnant of her next existence in order to become more competitive with the meaning of life ..she meets an angel who refuses material existence because he discovered he was created by God to create those things that God could not personally bear to

At the appointed time: Verso

Constantly trying to lower his own opinion of himself an arrogant man learns to interact with a remnant of his last existence in order to become more competitive with the senselessness of life ..he meets an angel who refuses material existence because he discovered he was created by God to destroy those things that God could not personally bear to

Invasion Day

After another mass stranding near Jellulabubnerarrabran ..angry reprasentatives of the Wirradweeb people call on state officials to take decisive action ..’they come here and take our fish ..now they think they own the beach’ ..tribal elders say they will now refer to the event as invasion day